Many famous anti-Jewish thinkers are buried at the Ludendorff cemetery and helped found it

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Below is a writeup on the Ludendorff cemetery which they call an "ancestral site".  It seems that many anti-Jewish thinkers who may not have been directly involved with the group still chose to make their grave there. Even though Hitler banned the Ludendorff organization for some time, some Nazis still chose to make their grave in the Ludendorff cemetery and it seems Nazis were instrumental in opening the site. One of cemeteries is in Hude and maybe another in a place that might be called Conneforde. If anyone knows how to get in contact with anyone that has any administration over the cemeteries please contact me (Vincent.Bruno.1229@gmail.com). 

https://www.nwzonline.de/niedersachsen/wo-alte-nazis-friedlich-ruhen-duerfen_a_19,0,506055321.html#

Where old Nazis are allowed to rest peacefully

There are two so-called ancestral sites in the region. What's behind these idyllic forest cemeteries?

Karsten Krogmann

01.09.2016, 11:00 o'clock

Conneforde/Hude - She now rests under oaks. The late summer sun blinks through the branches, behind it the lake glows green. Birds are chirping. On her tombstone is her motto, a sentence by Schiller in Fraktur script: "What you don't give up, you haven't lost".

Gertrud Herr, born in 1910 and buried in 2003, has never lost her misconceptions. Well into her old age, the former leader of the "Bund Deutscher Mädel" (BDM) denied the Holocaust.

Another boulder, another brown name: Hans Hertel is buried here, an SS man and later a member of the state parliament for the right-wing extremist German Reich Party. Wilhelm Tietjen, NSdAP member and namesake of the right-wing radical Wilhelm Tietjen Foundation, has a stone here. The same goes for Dr. Alfred Thoß, author of völkisch books and Nazi propaganda pamphlets. And Erich Glagau, now 100, has also reserved a grave site here: an author living in Hesse who, according to the American Jewish Committee, "agitated against Jews in several books" and calls the extermination of the Jews a "fairy tale."

The idyllic "ancestral site of Conneforde" in the municipality of Wiefelstede (Ammerland), where numerous innocent citizens from the region also found their peace, is apparently a popular last address for old and new Nazis from all over Germany.

Commemoration of Ludendorff

The ancestral site was founded in 1958 with the help of Marie Adelheid Reuss-zur Lippe, NSdAP member since 1930, known as "The Brown Princess". There was a model, it is located almost 50 kilometers further south: in Hude (Oldenburg district).

The landscape beats gentle waves, wild heather blooms between juniper bushes and birches. "Ahnenstätte Hilligenloh" stands above a wooden portal, behind which mighty rhododendrons hide two boulders. The left stone honors the "great freedom fighter" General Erich Ludendorff, who marched with Adolf Hitler in 1923 for a coup attempt on the Feldherrenhalle in Munich. The stone on the right commemorates his second wife Mathilde Ludendorff, "creator and pioneer of the knowledge of God".

Mathilde Ludendorff (1877 to 1966) developed the "Knowledge of God (L)" in several writings; the "L" stands for Ludendorff. Her followers revere her work as a "philosophy", and the German government sees it as an "anti-pluralistic and racist, especially anti-Semitic worldview".

Forbidden Movement

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the "Bund für Gottwissen" (BfG), which referred to Mathilde Ludendorff, as "right-wing extremist". In 1961, the BfG was banned as anti-constitutional. The ban was lifted in 1976 – not out of doubts about its hostility to the constitution, as the Bavarian Administrative Court noted, but for reasons of "proportionality". The BfG's own publishing house "Hohe Warte" in Pähl, Upper Bavaria, was also temporarily banned.

At the beginning of the 1930s, there were also so-called Ludendorffers in Hude. Hermann Grüttemeier, the local leader of the movement, promoted the establishment of a "Deutschvolkfriedhof". He was able to open it in 1933 after the intercession of General Ludendorff; In February, the general and his wife visited the completed "Hilligenloh ancestral site".

When the association "Ahnenstätte Hilligenloh" was re-founded after the war in 1948 in order to "build dignified final resting places for its members and all credulous Germans", the Ludendorff connection was retained. According to the statutes, only "those who feel connected to the knowledge of God (L)" could become members of the association. In 1973, in the meantime more and more members of the banned BfG had sought refuge in the association, the sentence was concretized: "Anyone who feels connected to Mathilde Ludendorff's (L) knowledge of God can become a member".

But it wasn't until 1999 that someone publicly took issue with it: Reiner Backenköhler, a Protestant pastor in Hude, now 53 years old, demanded clarification about the goals of the association. He was bothered by symbols such as the swastika, an old symbol similar to a swastika (such as on the wall of the morgue), and the Ludendorff memorials. Soon, Backenköhler received death threats. And in the 42-page pamphlet "Heretic Campaign in Germany", the BfG declared, among other things, that Erich Ludendorff was not an anti-Semite, but an "anti-Mosaist".

The Ahnenstätte association distanced itself from the BfG document. After months of discussions in a specially set up working group of the municipality, it was agreed to "green" the Ludendorff memorial stones and to erect an information board. Today, it reads: "The 'Ahnenstätte' association, for all its time constraints, was independent of the National Socialist spirit." The Ludendorff stones are "contemporary historical testimonies" that "are in no way intended to call for racist or anti-semitic thoughts."

Discussion in Hude

15 years later, Pastor Backenköhler says: Yes, he is still satisfied with the result of the public reappraisal. "The debate was good for Hude."

However, the reference to Mathilde Ludendorff's racist knowledge of God is still in the statutes today – and the association can't get it out of it either. When the statutes were amended in 1973, the General Assembly also amended the passage amending the statutes. Since then, regulations on the purpose and membership of the association may only be changed if all members of the association agree – a quorum that chairman Dr. Ekkehard Mannigel (71) calls an "eternity clause".

He tries again and again. Most recently, in 2012, the General Assembly approved a proposal to replace the phrase "connected to Mathilde Ludendorff's knowledge of God (L)" with the words: "connected to the ideals of the Enlightenment (Immanuel Kant and others)". The District Court of Oldenburg rejected the amendment to the statutes with reference to the quorum, and the Higher Regional Court of Oldenburg confirmed the rejection in 2013. Mannigel calls Ludendorff's philosophy "dogmatically ideologized and defamatory to others." He considers the amendment of the statutes to be "essential for survival", "numerous efforts" are underway.

(Editor's note: In the meantime, the association has succeeded in legally enforcing the amendment to the statutes. Chairman Mannigel told the NWZ in May 2015: "There are therefore no connections whatsoever to the BfG, the ancestral site association was and is legally autonomous and independent. The few members who are also members of the BfG are well-known and cannot influence the fate of the ancestral site of Hilligenloh because they have no access to association offices.")

NPD man on the board

In Conneforde, the statutes do not cause any problems. "Any innocent person of good faith can become a member of the association," it says; then the association enables her to "build dignified final resting places". Behind the wooden portal, modelled on the Huder Gate, the usual rules apply: no flowers, no Christian symbols, no figures. Instead, forest plants, boulders, natural stone.

But there are these names on the stones. And in the register files of the district court: Alfred Manke, for example, the publisher from Bassum (Diepholz district), born in 1929, headed the association for 17 years. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Manke is known as a founding member of the NPD in Lower Saxony; In 1972 he ran for the Bundestag for the party. In 2008 he handed over the chairmanship of the ancestral site to the teacher Wolf-Dieter Schröppe from Uchte (Nienburg district), born in 1962.

Schröppe published texts in the monthly journal "Faith and Work", published by the "Bund Deutscher Unitarier", where Manke was also involved. According to the "Handbook of German Right-Wing Extremism", published by Jens Mecklenburg in Berlin in 1996, a certain Marie Adelheid Reuss-zur Lippe was involved in the founding of the Unitarians, the "brown princess". The "Handbook" also states: In the 1950s, young Unitarians were asked to "only elect spouses of German blood"; Unitarians such as Hermann Thiele gave lectures to the banned Viking Youth. (Thiele's boulder is very close to Gertrud Herr's stone in Conneforde.) The Unitarians lost a lawsuit against the designation "Nazi sect".

Schröppe also published at least one text in the journal "Mensch und Maß", the organ of the Federation for the Knowledge of God, published by the publishing house Hohe Warte.

The board of the Ancestral Sites Association did not want to answer questions from the NWZ at short notice. The municipality of Wiefelstede expressed a similar view: The ancestral site had never been an issue, said Mayor Jörg Pieper (independent).